Taken by Louis Vest.
Broken into two halves to meet Flickr’s arbitrary 90 second time limit.
The two halves were assembled in Quicktime from 2000 still images taken by using a Nikon D700 in the “interval timer” mode. The camera was fastened to an outside rail and set to take a photo every six seconds. Quicktime then assembled the photos into a .mov file that plays back at 12 frames per second. So, one minute of movie time represents 72 minutes of trip time on the channel. The first half begins just below the Port of Houston Authority Turning Basin (the very end of the channel) and continues down to Green’s Bayou. The second half takes us from there to Morgan’s Point at the head of Galveston Bay. From there we still have 31.5 miles of channel across the bay to the pilot station outside the Galveston jetties.
CAMERA SETTINGS were all manual to avoid surprises. The lens was a Nikon 17-35mm zoomed out to 17mm. White balance was set to tungsten, manual focus, iso 1600, 1/8 sec/ f/4. After the first part of the trip where the shore and docks are less dense I bumped the exposure up two stops to 1/4 sec and f/2.8. The overall result was a little dark for my taste after the deck floodlights were turned off so I added 1.33 gamma to all the photos taken after the deck lights were off. When I make the 1080 version I’ll fool around to make a more gradual transition there and will probably decease the exposure around the last terminal and bridge (on the second video).
It looks incredibly fast, but we were actually only making 5-6 knots in the first half and no more than 10 knots in the open areas of the second half.
You can watch the whole 3 minute piece in HQ here.
A daylight trip going all the way to the Gulf of Mexico can be found here.
A similar trip through the Panama Canal can be found here.
Comments
Scott Stringham “Rustling Leaf Design”
Cool second half!
Scott Stringham “Rustling Leaf Design”
have you every computed the equivalent speed in MPH you are going in the time lapse version?
Dave in Tejas
Awesome!!
Sgt. Gary W. Jones
I agree with Dave, that was absolutely awesome.
AGrinberg
That ship channel is much longer than I imagined. It would be interesting to see your course charted on a Google map. Where was your starting point?
OneEighteen
I’ll add some notes above to answer your questions. They’ll be more accessible that way. Thanks for the visit.
that owl
That’s just very cool, Lou…a good use for flickr’s video…. Amazing really…how you weave through there in the dark.
33k
That is great!
Jimmy Hawkins
I’ve never seen anything like this from the perspective of a large ship. Thanks for sharing this!
smalltown07
This is so incredibly amazing.
Cynner_SF
that shipping channel is endless!?! i’ve never seen anything like it. what a cool video.
Termin8er
Watched this one in full screen. That is definitely the way tom experience these. TA
videoal
Thanks for sharing this! May I suggest you add a sound track to make it a bit more realistic? I used a digital camera to capture this one:
www.flickr.com/photos/videoal/3143481574/in/set-721576045…
Cybastean
I really enjoyed both of these. I tend to forget just how extensive the whole port complex is. I watched the movie before I read the caption (so as not to spoil the ending) and I was thinking you must be in sight of the jetties when the Fred Hartman showed up.
niko7865
In 6 seconds at 10 knots, the ship would travel about 101 feet. In 12 frames this that would 1212 feet, or 718 knots (~826 miles per hour). As he says in the description, 72 times as fast.
happywaffle
Here’s the route covered in the video: maps.google.com/maps/ms?msa=0&msid=106108931087575796…
J e n s
Awesome! Just recently I saw a TV documentation of something similar, a ship being escorted out of the harbour and the TV guys did cut the smooth timelapse movie like an action movie with views from the air and the dock and then the ship and back again. #blah# I really liked your presentation, it is so organic in its movement. Great exposure control through the video, this must be hard :)
nicksmarto
This is absolutely amazing! I use Nikon Camera Control software on my laptop with my D80, which can be a little inconvenient. This is a beautiful timelapse and so innovative!!!!
OneEighteen
@ Videoal - I like the idea of a sound track but would I have to give rudder commands at appropriate points in the soundtrack? I don’t think I can talk that fast without catching my lips on fire. Even the guy that reads the small print in the Cialis advertisement couldn’t talk that fast.
anderspace
Excellent. Beautiful work!
— Seen on your photo stream. (?)
keelinwyman
Great video. You should use the song “You, Appearing” by M83 for the background music. I just listened to it and watched simultaneously and it was really nice.
twinegarden
That was awesome! I’m trying to learn about doing time lapse stuff myself. Very, very cool.
elanicstuff
You should post this in high-def on Vimeo! (www.vimeo.com)
Vimeo allows for much higher quality than youtube. And you don’t have to break the video in half.
mawa_73527
great!
gray_um
Very cool indeed.
Specific Gravity
Awesome video! Enjoyed it!
paba a a a
this is my first video favorited
dksada
Wow. That’s fantastic. How long have you been using digital SLR’s? It really is an amazing video to watch. Should be amazing in high definition.